The Evolution of CIB
Kia Ora!
I fell in love with ramp skating in 2012. It's been my goal to create safe and welcoming environments for skaters of all backgrounds in the ramp skating community.
When I had that first experience on the ramps with my friend Michelle “Cutthroat,” I can remember the mix of joy and excitement that filled my heart. When I heard her say ”look at all these chicks in bowls,” my creativity was sparked, and the very first graphic was born.
Not long after, I created a page with some friends to share Auckland skating photos and videos and to inspire other women to feel welcome in their local parks, which at the time, and still often are, heavily male-dominated environments.
The community of Chicks in Bowls bloomed into something magical through the growth of over 300 local chapters sparked by that first request by skaters in Argentina. The community was growing, and as the creator and founder, I had to decide where to take it.
Our original founding team consisted of Nick Agnew and Sandy Hall, aka Mumma-Trample, and myself. We worked to create the brand and Chapter community many of you have come to know. We were inspired to build something that made everyone feel welcome and to collaborate on ways to make aggressive ramp skating more fun and accessible for skaters of all levels.
In 2014 we launched our first website. We started to create apparel, accessories, and skate gear, that many of you have supported since then. In the last few years we have built hardware in collaboration with Reidell starting with our wheels in 2016, and most recently, our Slide Blocks. We have also partnered with Frogmouth Clothing to create fantastic athletic apparel. Most recently we've begun hosting international skate park meetups in partnership with WFTDA.
In 2018 our community started to change. Co-founder Nick Agnew retired from the business, and Erin Burrell came on board to help us continue to grow. These shifts sparked a number of adaptations to the way we work to create inclusive environments at CIB.
In March 2019, we started the rebranding of our website to cibcrew.com and began to investigate how to make sure everyone feels welcome without needing to read the fine print.
With the recent conversations regarding CIB, we have taken some time to step back and look at our community, its brand, mission, and goals. Inclusivity has always been a priority for us, however, we haven’t always represented that in our actions as well as we could have. As of today, our social pages, hashtags and language will all reflect these changes. That is just the start.
The phrase "Chicks in Bowls" is a part of who we were, and while it feels sad to release those words, from a historical standpoint, we know that the current CIB Crew we are trying to build, is one where it should be readily apparent that anyone is welcome. From here on out each of us can decide what the C in CIB means to them. Choose your own adventure! We want gender diverse, non-binary, women, men, kids, older skaters, every size, every ethnicity, every shape, and all that's in between, to know they are invited and encouraged to be a part of this community and our brand.
We invite you to participate in the growth of our Chapters, skate scene, and community alongside us. We’re in this for the long run, and the only way this will work is if we do this together, as a community in bowls, working to inspire the next generation of rollers.
We welcome you to come skate with us. Without you, there is no us.
Ngā mihi
Lady Trample
She/Her/Hers
CIB Founder
If you have feedback, ideas, or critique for our team, we invite you to reach out to us and share it via this feedback form. You can also contact us via email at info@cibcrew.com